Open technology
Your software is yours, and you find out the day you want to switch.
Choosing open technology is neither an ideological stance nor a technical decision: it is who is in charge of your product five years from now. With proprietary software, the answer is your supplier. With open technology, it is you.
What changes for you
- Your investment does not expire when somebody else changes course
- A vendor can raise the price, withdraw a feature, change its licence terms or shut down. With open technology none of that leaves you without a way out: what already works keeps working and stays yours.
- Growing does not multiply the bill
- With no per-user or per-server licences, adding people or opening an office does not send the cost up. What you pay for is the work of building and keeping it running, not a toll for continuing to use it.
- You can change supplier without changing system
- Us included. If one day you want to take it to another team or bring it in house, the system goes with you whole. A supplier who knows you can leave is a supplier who earns the relationship every month.
- You can show what is inside
- When a client, an auditor or a tender asks what your system is made of, the answer exists and can be documented. With a proprietary black box, all you can do is repeat what you were told.
- The knowledge is not held by a single vendor
- It rests on standards half the industry knows, so there are people able to maintain it inside and outside your country. You do not depend on the schedule or the price list of one certified partner.
- Faults are seen by many people, not only by whoever created them
- A problem in a piece used by thousands of organisations is found and fixed in the open, instead of waiting for a vendor to decide whether it deserves a patch.
The same decision, seen from both sides
| With proprietary software | With open technology | |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay for | Licences that renew and grow with use | The work of building and keeping it running |
| Changing supplier | Redoing a good part of the system | The system goes with you |
| If the vendor changes course | You adapt or you fall behind | What works keeps working |
| Seeing what is inside | Whatever the vendor chooses to tell you | Everything, and it can be evidenced |
| Who can maintain it | Their network of certified partners | Any capable team, including yours |
| Where it runs | Wherever the contract allows | Wherever you decide |
63% of the European organisations surveyed say open source software often improves their productivity, 62% that it reduces vendor lock-in and 58% that it lowers their cost of software ownership.
The two limits
Open is not free of charge: the cost is the team that designs it, maintains it and answers when something fails. What disappears is the toll for using your own system, not the work of keeping it up.
And it is not always the answer: when the right piece for your case is a proprietary product, we use it and we tell you, with its terms up front.
Where do we start?
Two ways to begin, depending on what you have in front of you today. Answered within one working day.